Nomenclature Misnomer
by navigated
Summary: So far, keeping it together's been tough. /8059/


The nickname "baseball idiot" wasn't exactly the epitome of wit and cleverness, it's bluntness was the naming equivalent of school yard hair pulling. When Gokudera started using the term it was really out of a lack of interest to think of anything better. The played baseball, and he was an idiot. It was the perfect descriptor, obviously. Simply using his last name (Takeshi had often told the family it was fine for them to use his first name – but everyone was just so used to "Yamamoto") wasn't distant or disrespectful enough. The lame nickname would have to do.

Unfortunately, it was a real misnomer. Admittedly, as a teen, Yamamoto's sole motivation was baseball. Sitting through the school day, sleeping in class and hoping he didn't get caught, all the classes he had no real interest in, they were all worth suffering and stumbling through, in order to get to baseball practice at the end of the day.

The idiot part was where the misnomer began. Sure, he was largely disinterested in school and algebra totally escaped him, but he was not an idiot. Simply because he didn't pay attention didn't mean the lectures didn't sink in, it didn't mean he was stupid. His average/below average marks in school weren't for a lack of material retention, it was just simple disinterest. He could name the last 30 eras of history in order as assigned for the history oral exam, just when he came up to the front of the room to recite them he got distracted. Maybe something had caught his attention out the window, or maybe Gokudera was absentmindedly chewing on the cap of his pen at the back of the room, staring absently out the window, the sun glinting brightly off his glasses and – and maybe something distracted him, so instead Takeshi just laughed absently, shrugged, and returned to his seat

He'd be a liar if he didn't admit to himself that this didn't happen often, so it was no surprise (to him least of all) that the notion that Yamamoto Takeshi was an idiot stuck around. He didn't mind, he wasn't insulted, if anything the nickname "baseball idiot" turned into something of a term of endearment. Really it meant that Gokudera was talking about him, or talking to him, and he'd take that. He didn't understand his need to make Gokudera like him, maybe it was because he found himself so well liked by so many people, it was discouraging to find that this one person (this one person that he just really wanted to like him) just did not like him. Maybe it was jealousy – that's what he was told anyway, that Gokudera thought that Yamamoto was going to take away his position as right-hand-man. Which couldn't have been further from the truth, Yamamoto hardly took the mafia seriously for the first 3 years of being officially part of it. He thought the whole thing was a game. Which may have also been another reason Hayato found him so intolerable – Hayato fit into academia. It suited him. The fact that Yamamoto appeared, to him, to be an idiot, was reason for disdain and judgment. He just didn't respect Yamamoto because he thought he didn't know his "ass from his elbow", as Gokudera once put it during one of their math tutoring sessions.

The truth of the matter was, no matter how many times Gokudera explained the quadratic formula Yamamoto would always ask Gokudera to explain it again, next week, chuckling awkwardly. It wasn't that he didn't want understand, it was that if he did understand, he wouldn't be able to ask Gokudera for help on his math homework anymore. In the end, the whole ploy was just as childish as the asinine nickname he was given.

It continued into their adult years, well out of school and well out of their more innocent times. Tie hanging limply around his neck, he'd shuffle over to Gokudera's room, knocking and sheepishly gesture to his unfinished state of dress, Gokudera would scoff and oblige, usually making some offhanded comment about how he would have thought Yamamoto would have figured it out by now. The truth of the matter was that he had figured it out, he knew how to tie a tie at age 10. He just lead Gokudera to believe that he didn't. The whole family thought he didn't know a word of Italian that didn't come off of a restaurant menu, he let them think that so when he was sent to Italy on missions, Gokudera, often times, would have to join him simply for the sake of communication. The fact of the matter was, so long as you have two brain cells to rub together, if you spend over 10 years hearing a language on a very regular basis, you pick a thing or two up. Or practically become fluent, as the case was. But so long as the family bought into the "baseball idiot" stigma, Gokudera was coming to Italy with him. Gokudera was tying his tie for him. Gokudera was there with him. Shouting at him maybe, berating him maybe, but he was there.

He wasn't nearly as stupid as he allowed people to think. Selfish, perhaps, but certainly not stupid. But he could live with people thinking otherwise.


End file.
